Rainbow Dash returns from an evening in Cloudsdale to find Pinkie Pie in a dreadful state after a terrible nightmare. The pegasus tries her best to comfort her friend, but will it be enough?

Image by microgrid (http://microgrid.deviantart.com/).

Spanish translation by SPANIARD KIWI - https://www.deviantart.com/spaniard-kiwi/art/La-luz-en-la-oscuridad-970255243
Reading by Agent Fluffy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdVGfjmnsrM
Reading by Alchemystudent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcdJtTA5A14
Reading by AJ Earthbend - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw_sIt1PfQ8
Review (sort of) by Changeling Number 32 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEb_xv9eQdo

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and its characters are owned by Lauren Faust and Hasbro. Characters are used without permission but with the greatest respect.

It just isn’t Carrot Top’s lucky day. First, she has an existential crisis. Then the doctor tells her she only has weeks to live. Finally, she accidentally robs the Ponyville Bank. What can a mild-mannered carrot farmer do, having nothing to lose and armed with more money than she could ever hope to spend? Well, in this case she decides it’s high time she fulfilled her wildest dreams – but when happy-go-lucky Lyra Heartstrings joins the journey, things don’t go exactly as planned...

//Rated Teen for innuendos and several adult references, but contains no explicit material able to disturb minor readers.//

Twilight Sparkle has finally perfected a device allowing ponies to speak to each other over great distances. Unfortunately, the first call she receives is from Pinkie. Things go downhill from there.

Pinkie Pie has always served admirably as the Element of Laughter, and it's time for the princesses to show their appreciation. In fact, they have a special assignment for her, something they've never tried. It will be the best surprise she ever had.

Third-place winner in the /fic/ write-off "The First Time."

Featured on Equestria Daily!

Thanks to Scott "Inquisitor" M for critique of my rough draft.

Dogs act like they love their families, but nopony will ever know for sure. More importantly, Winona's family loves her. She couldn't ask for more. But she does love them. She really does.

Second-place winner in the /fic/ write-off "Long Way Home."

Featured on Equestria Daily!

Set in Lopoddity's Pandora-verse, where Discord and Twilight had a daughter. Pandora wants to know if draconequuses have their own country. After Discord's attempt to correct her pronounciation is mistaken by Pandora for the name of the country, Discord tells her a bedtime story about the fate of the country Draconequui and all the draconequuses that ungrammatically lived within it. And dad-trolls the heck out of her in general. Written with permission.

(Image is actually from moments after Pandora's hatching, though I may replace it if Lopoddity publishes a Discord-and-Pandora image that seems more apropos.)

Cadance isn't Sombra. But Sombra's leadership is all the crystal ponies remember, a ruler they had to love at all costs, with the final payment being their own lives. And as they gradually come to see their new Princess as leader instead of savior, too much of that residual fear is being transferred to her. They praise her, adore her, refuse to correct her no matter what she does -- because they live in terror of the consequences for doing anything else. They have yet to find their own voices, and may go on repeating hers until Celestia and Luna switch shifts. So how can she make them tell her when she's wrong, see that there's nothing to be afraid of, and take the next step in coming back to themselves once and for all?

Forbidding them to do anything other than criticize her should do the trick, right?

...right?

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group -- but can be read as a stand-alone, and no knowledge of the other stories is required. New members and trope edits are welcome.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Sweetie Belle has afternoon tea and a pleasant chat with an incomprehensible being from beyond the bounds of reality.

Surprisingly, nothing about this situation seems unusual to her.

(Oneshotober 2014—Contains random absurdity I slapped together in about two hours to try and break writer's block.)

It's a perfect day in the life of Twilight Sparkle. Ponyville's chief librarian has everything she wants: her books, her studies, a faithful dragon assistant, and the opportunity to go visit Sugarcube Corner on a beautiful afternoon, hanging out with the best friends that a young unicorn could ever ask for.

And yet, in spite of all this, Twilight has the distinct feeling that something is missing...

Discord's the only creature in Equestria who can recognize the human for what he is -- not the long-lost Seventh Element that never actually existed and couldn't have existed before the human arrived, but a meta-reality warper, an entity far more powerful than Discord with the power to warp the minds of all around him and the very rules of magic to make sure that he's always the Big Hero. And the role the human's assigned to Discord is the Villain to beat down or kill.

Pre-reform Discord's fine with being the villain. But on his own terms. Not dancing on some alien interloper's puppet strings.

Without friendship, or even allies, Discord's going to have to find a way to defeat a creature who can alter fate itself and who can even mind-control him. Or he may just end up worse than dead.

Art by Tenchi-Outsuno. Progress Bar at my writing journal.

Trigger warnings: Mind control (magically induced love, magically induced friendship, magically induced stupidity, Discord being Discord), noncon/dubcon (magically induced love, other forms of highly dubious consent), rape (female on male), violence/gore (mostly against Discord), literally everything in chapters 19-21, humans not being presented as unilaterally wonderful and superior to ponies and/or draconequui.